Friday, May 11, 2012

It's never too late to feel like a huge dork!

Graduation rehearsal today. I'm the first faculty member to come up on the stage to announce graduates. We're in the gym this year, because there's an impossibly remote chance of rain tomorrow, so there's a stage set up with, of course, stairs to get to it. The dean who's MC'ing the rehearsal calls me forward. So off I go, all bouncy and cute and "Hey! I'm 8 months pregnant and still so perky! Look at me!", springing up the stairs and bouncy bouncy bouncy.

And my sandal catches on the top step and I trip. Of course I do. Into a full-out, all-fours plant on the stage. In front of the entire graduating class and sundry others. Eight months pregnant. (My due date is a month from today, in fact.)

The gasp that goes up is terrible. The dean is rushing towards me in alarm.

Oh, I am mortified, and somehow that mortification carries me springing back to my feet (at this point it's not usually easy to get up out of that position--I have no idea what I did), all "I'm fine! Ha ha! That's exactly what I was afraid I'd do!", big smiles and carrying on as planned, etc. etc.

My knee was skinned up, too, and I kept my skirt very carefully over it until I went home. Just to make me look a little bit less like a ten-year-old.

And I can't help but wonder whether there was anyone in that graduating class who might have been secretly glad to see me go down?

Oh, my goodness, I'm such a dork. I really ought to learn not to strut around being cute--it never ends well. Sigh.

After eight years--and tenure--at a 4/4 SLAC in the middle of the fields, I'm starting a 2/2 position at an East Coast R1 where I actually teach my specialty (medieval literature). I've got a young son pseudonymed Bonaventure, a husband called The Minister, and a knitting fixation. Email me at heumihi at yahoo dot com.